Chapter 1 Free Preview: Your beliefs as strategic fodder for the GOP

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A Letter to US Middle-Class Christians, by Daniel Burgin

Chapter 1 Preview: Your beliefs as strategic fodder for the GOP


You are a middle-class American, a Christian with a reverence for the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ. You believe the Democrats in the federal government and perhaps many longtime Republicans are not listening to you. You believe the US Constitution is a document written following Christian principles, namely the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament. You generally believe that politicians are harming our society; perhaps you even believe that some politicians are destroying the fabric of our shared Christian values. You believe in, and perhaps even support the Tea Party. You believe that our country is immoral in the eyes of God if abortion is allowed to continue, if gays are allowed to marry, if military spending is curtailed - lessening US global power - a bad thing, you believe - since the US is a just and righteous country, created in the image of our Judeo-Christian God and our influence, political and military, around the world is an inarguable force for good.

These things you believe.

You may believe other things as well. You may believe that "Obamacare", as you might like to call it, is socialized medicine, a government takeover of the best health care system in the world. You may believe that the US Constitution was written by our Christian founders, God-fearing people like you. You may believe that our military will be weakened now that gays are allowed to serve openly in our armed forces. You may believe President Obama is not a Christian like you, but rather a secret Muslim. You may further believe that our President was not born in the US - making him constitutionally illegitimate. You may believe you are not a socialist (I will show you that you probably are and that this is probably a good thing). You may believe that our President, and indeed many Liberals are Socialists and don't believe in a free market economy. You may believe that if Republicans were put firmly in charge of our government and held to task by people like you, the US economy would flourish and our debts would subside, perhaps even disappear. Even if you don't fully believe the things in this paragraph, you have many conservative friends and colleagues who do believe these things.

You believe in these things and many others, and your beliefs are bolstered by what your GOP elected officials tell you - confirming the rightness of your beliefs.

If you could answer yes to some, perhaps much of the above declarations, you should read on. As I will show, you have been misled by people you trust who tell you they care about the social issues you care about - they don't - as we shall prove. If you care to keep an open mind, I'm confident you will see that you are being used to make rich Americans ever more so, and that this wealth is contributed to the rich from your pocket. This book will lay out facts and history to bolster the argument that you are being deceived. I believe that if you keep an open mind you will see the sometimes ugly truth and realize that you have been lied to, misled, manipulated by those pretending to represent you - when in reality they are working against your best interest - aggressively.

This book is a discussion of political strategies of conservative politicians, and their effects on the US economy and in general the well-being of our society. I know some of what I posit will be controversial, but I have taken care to support my views with facts, documents in many cases, and I am confident this view is logical and represents reasoned and defensible views on the subject. You may already be thinking I am wrong. On this we can agree, even now, one of us is right and one of us is not.

Most of us are too busy living our lives, working, raising our children, and even just relaxing to pay close enough attention to the details of what is happening, really happening in our government. In other words, we are easy prey for those who say one thing, but then disingenuously implement policies and laws that are driving toward an outcome completely different from their words and protestations. Instead of addressing what you believe in, the issues they campaign on, once in office they drive hard at outcomes that are deeply harmful to you, your family, and our countries future – as we shall see.

The aim of this book is to create a construct for understanding the purposeful divisiveness of our political discourse - a divisiveness that stimulates the fears and biases of the GOP voter base, distracted from the facts of what is happening by the business of our daily lives. This book is based on facts and data that show that the greatest threat to America's national health, both short-term and long-term, is the willful manipulation by some politicians - mostly conservatives - who are exploiting social issues of voters too busy working to notice the lies. These politicians purposefully and even masterfully ignite and feed the fire of fears, cultural biases, and religious hot buttons so they can gain our trust, attain official power and remain in power. We will examine all these issues and more, but more to the point, we will examine the fact that these issues are the gas in the GOP's manipulative and disingenuous electoral engine aimed at manipulating you, the Christian conservative right. All of this will be explored in more depth in this and upcoming chapters.

But wait, you may be saying, GOP politicians do work on social issues important to their Christian conservative constituency. Well, in a way. Let me explain. Once in power these conservative politicians do indeed attempt (and almost always fail) to support the social, religious, and cultural issues of their constituents, but all the while in office are pressing an economic agenda that is harmful to their middle-class constituents, and that is at the very heart of our undoing. Their economic agenda harms most the wallets of those middle-class voters who elected these lawmakers. It is a tragic game, played by ambition-driven politicians, who disingenuously play on the fears and biases of their God-fearing constituents who are too busy working to see the truth. They lie to the very people who vote for them, to get elected. Once in office, they gain the platform and power to press their illogical and harmful (as I will show) economic policies to favor their corporate sponsors and benefactors - and harm the middle class.

You are being used to make corporations and wealthy individuals ever wealthier. This is a zero sum game - as their actions make you less powerful, poorer, and more likely to fall into financial ruin.

This is manipulative, disingenuous, dangerous, and is counter to almost all reasoned analysis of what is good and healthy for America. But worst of all, I will show that in ignoring the economic needs of the middle class in favor of business interests, the obvious singular approach of the GOP, these conservative politicians are pursuing an outcome that is ultimately bad for all; bad for those who vote for the Right on the grounds of culture war issues without doubt, but even destructive (self-destructive) to these politicians and their corporate donors.

I mentioned earlier that conservative politicians attempt and fail to implement conservative social agenda's (outlaw abortion, outlaw gay marriage, press for even more unimpeded gun rights, bringing God into the US government, etc). Why do they fail? Is it perhaps because they want to fail? Perhaps not, but imagine if all these conservative desires were fully supported by our laws. Wouldn't GOP politicians then lose the social agenda hooks that allow them to support culture war issues to get votes? During the most recent Bush Administration, when the GOP held majorities in The White House, the Senate, the House, and the US Supreme Court, why didn't abortion become illegal? Why weren't the Ten Commandments allowed to be displayed in all Federal Courts? Why weren't Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid terminated for good? It's an interesting problem to ponder - and ponder we will in upcoming chapters.

First, I want to establish the logical reasoning behind my conclusion that the GOP's financial theories are wrong-headed, unworkable, and ultimately deeply destructive to a healthy US economy and society, destructive to most of those who elect them, and even eventually deeply destructive to themselves and their wealthy individual backers and wealthy corporate benefactors. I will show that conservative economic theories are illogical, demonstrably so, and further I will show that if they are implemented or left unchecked, will drive us into extinction as a great financial player in the world economy, and destroy the voice of freedom and human dignity that is America's great gift to the world.

For more than a century, Americans have believed in a capitalist free market, and further that if our markets are largely freed from government oversight and protected from any undue tax burdens, that this is the best means upon which to build a wealthy nation. In this construct, anyone could become fabulously wealthy based upon the merit of their own ideas and hard work. This is a universally held belief, provably true, and is the basis of America's great financial wealth and power.

A brief example of the power of free markets and entrepreneurship. I have a friend; let's call him Steve (not his name). In 1999 he noticed a conceptual opportunity in the online auction space, a hole if you will in the business models of eBay and Amazon - both working furiously at the time to attract users to their online auction sites for used retail goods. His concept was simple. What if he could build a website where consumers could sell their used items, books, music CD's, DVD's etc. that they no longer wanted? But his model had a twist.

Rather than used items being subjected to auction dynamics where prices are set by the highest bidder, used items for sale would be priced at half price for those items in good condition, and priced downward from there if items were more heavily used. For instance, a book bought at retail price for $30, still in excellent condition could be sold for $15. Users simply entered the ISBN number listed on the book, an image of the book would appear, and the item was listed. Simple, and effective and filled a conceptual hole in the online auction space.

Steve hired a co-founder programmer, who started to build a prototype, and Steve began talking to investors about the idea. In the summer of 1999 they raised a relatively small amount of capital, a few million dollars, launched the site, and began to operate the business and attract consumers wishing to sell their items not in an auction, but for a fair half price. In less than a year, eBay noticed his site, saw that it filled a hole in their business model, and negotiations began. Shortly thereafter, Steve and his small team of employees and investors sold the business for more than $300M. Since investors usually take 40-50% ownership in the business, Steve and his small founder group made a tidy $150M for themselves in about a year. And since this was income from a stock investment, it's highly likely the government considered this capital gains income, not wages, and taxed the income at only 15%, rather than 39%, the top regular income rate at the time.

The free market is a gold mine for rewarding good ideas that are well executed. This opportunity is open to all Americans and is a byproduct of our free market. Clearly, free markets are a powerful idea and a gift to Americans.

However, unharnessed capitalism is not universally a good thing. For a capitalist economy to thrive there must be a large and functioning middle-class, with lots of disposable income to spend and drive the economy - buying the products and services of those who create them (entrepreneurs). Pure capitalist economies do not exist. All capitalist economies are some combination of free, unfettered capitalism and socialist policies that protect those that fail to thrive (programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Universal Health care... just to name a few in the US). This capitalist economy is further balanced by a government which can tax, which has oversight to protect the common good (the overall economy, financial markets, the environment, worker's rights, etc.) and the teeth to enforce substantive, behavior modifying penalties on those who flaunt regulations.

From a purely conservative ideological perspective, those who "fail to thrive", as I put it, are on their own. It is their fault if they are dumb or lazy enough to fail having the great luck to be born in the world's most successful economy. Further conservative ideologues will argue that in a fair and efficient economy, why should the wealthy pay for the poor? It's fundamentally unfair, right? This is a matter of ideological purity and not a serious argument in my view. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't function in a pure way - it's messy and sub-optimal. We have to accept that pure capitalism doesn't work - however much conservative ideologues would like to believe it would. Mixed economies of capitalism and "practical socialism" are the only model anywhere in the world – there are no purely capitalistic economies, and for good reason. As former aide to US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and now MSNBC commentator, Lawrence O'Donnell states, “mixed economies of capitalism and "practical socialism" are the only workable free market model. As a matter of fact, all capitalist societies in the world are some mix of capitalism and socialism”.

As to this idea of ideological purity; it would be nice if everyone could simply flap their arms and fly, or close their eyes and teleport across the country or the world - after all this would be a "highly efficient" means of travel. Call it "Ideologically Pure Travel". Wishing it doesn't make it so. It is simply intolerable, within well-defined boundaries of relative fairness, for those who "fail to thrive" to be subjected to a life of misery, hunger, and homelessness. It's bad for our society, and bad for our economy. Some "practical socialism" that supports reasonable means of stopping poverty that does not overly harm innovation and capitalism is required, is ethical, and is unavoidable. As Lawrence O'Donnell states, "he [O'Donnell] was a socialist because he supported programs such as Medicare and Social Security -- which are, he said, explicitly socialistic at heart. He described Medicare as "a socialist idea whose time had come in a capitalist society." Moreover, he said, everyone who supports such programs is supporting socialism. O'Donnell further quoted economist Milton Friedman's famous maxim that "we are all Keynesian's now," and adopted it for himself: "we are all socialists now." (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED VIDEO if you disagree with this point, Lawrence O'Donnell, The Last Word).

The business-biased, and middle-class harming policies of the GOP cannot be allowed to continue. It will be the undoing of our economy - this seems entirely obvious, doesn't it? I think it does. Still not convinced, read on. There's much more to convince you.

If the GOP were to fully get its way, the course they would steer would quickly become unsustainable. For instance cutting taxes for the wealthy under the provably false premise that the wealthy are job creators. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, for every dollar in tax cuts, 10 cents is returned to the market and creates jobs. Contrast that with the fact that extending unemployment benefits contribute 70 cents of every dollar invested back into the market. Each percentage point better these numbers are increases market demand for goods and services, and therefore creates jobs. Stunningly, simply extending unemployment benefits, among many other better choices than lowering taxes on the wealthy, is 7 times more effective than extending the so-called Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy. (Congressional Budget Office, House Tax Proposal Analysis)

The data shows that only a very small percentage, less than 2%, of wealthy individuals create jobs. Most jobs are created today by entrepreneurs in their late 20's and early 30's, and they are certainly not wealthy. The GOP has been very successful in allowing the wealthy to become ever more so, at the expense of balancing that outcome with sustaining the middle class. Imagine a country of struggling middle class workers in the millions, many currently unemployed, trying to keep their homes, send their children to college, pay for heat, buy food and clothing. Struggle as they might they continue to borrow at unsustainable rates to keep up, falling deeper and deeper into peril - sound familiar? If too many Americans fall into this struggle, who will buy the products and services of entrepreneurs - new and old - that drive growth, sustain government through consumption tax revenue to fund the maintenance of our nation's roads, bridges, highways, train systems, schools - the engines of capitalism?

It's easy to see isn't it? Fewer and fewer in the middle class will maintain their important consumption as their struggle deepens. If the top 1% of wage earners in America are allowed to own 40%, 50%, even 60% of the nation's wealth, that is the path we're inexorably on if the GOP gets its way, America's economy will cease to function, companies will fail as consumer demand weakens, tax revenues will dissipate, and we will slowly fail as a country - likely taking the rest of the world with us into economic hell.

Furthermore, if social safety nets are dismantled, programs like Unemployment Insurance for instance, designed to sustain families in their homes during inevitable economic downturns in our economy, affected families will cease to participate in the economy at all. This set of events will further exacerbate the stagnation of our economy. A vicious cycle, leading to a spiraling down into economic death.

Additionally, the GOP is constantly pushing to lower corporate taxes. While the US corporate tax rate is higher than many countries, the GOP has been very successful in undermining this tax rate with exceptions. The US corporate tax code is so ripe with loopholes that many Fortune 500 companies pay no taxes at all. According to Forbes magazine, no liberal rag, "Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do--that is, if they pay taxes at all. The most egregious example is General Electric. [In 2009] the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but [because of loopholes in US Tax Code] ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion". (Forbes Magazine, What The Top U.S. Companies Pay in Taxes, How can it be that you pay more to the IRS than General Electric?)

On personal incomes, according to NY Times conservative columnist Nicholas Kristof, our transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy has reached insane levels. Kristof writes,

"the richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana." Kristof continues, "C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent." Clearly conservative economic policies are enriching their wealthy individual and corporate benefactors at the expense, and directly from the wallets of the middle class - whose incomes have been stagnant for almost 20 years. (Kristof, Our Banana Republic)

Given this situation, who in their right mind would continue to give tax breaks to the wealthy. Isn't 24% of our wealth for the top 1% enough? Who would want to dismantle social safety nets right when the risk is increasing? Who would want to lower corporate tax rates on companies who have had their richest quarters ever, and many pay low tax rates as a result of loopholes, some paying no tax at all?

This is economic suicide.

But this is exactly what Republicans want; static taxes on the middle class offering no growth in incomes, little or no taxes on corporations, rollbacks on all social safety nets like Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Katie-bar-the-door, don't ever let (gasp) low-income Americans have access to free-market managed health care. What the Right pejoratively calls "Obamacare" is just that, free-market managed universal health care, which lowers our deficits substantially over time according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO also forecasts that repealing the Affordable Care Act would increase deficits by $210 billion in the first decade, and by about $813 billion over the 2012-2021 period.

More can be done, and will be done to bend the cost curve downward in upcoming health care legislation (assuming the ideologically pure lawmakers, fighting against what is in every ones interests with their repeal nonsense, is removed from the US House of Representatives and more rational lawmakers preside), but the bill is a good start - despite lies from leadership on the Right about non-existent Death Panels meeting to do a cost-benefit analysis on treating grandma or letting her die (nonsense, created from whole cloth and propagated by prime manipulators like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich), lies about "Government takeover of Health care" and other such lies to further stimulate the already fearful GOP voter base, working too hard to pay close enough attention to see they are railing against their own best interests.

Did you see the anger in town hall meetings in the summer of 2010 with fearful GOP voters screaming at their elected representatives about death panels. It was frightening. Clearly these people believed the lies they had been told. They believed their health decisions were going to be made in some backroom by a team of bureaucrats. It would be funny were it not so tragically harmful to a rational discourse. It reminds me of that character played by the late Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live, who rants uncontrollably on some topic she clearly misunderstands, and when corrected meekly replies, "Oh, never mind".

On taxes, it is such standard Republican talking point strategy now, that GOP lawmakers seem to have tax cut Turret's Syndrome, wherein their answer to every crisis is "cut taxes". It's like that chiropractor joke. No matter what ails you, he'll "crack your bones", as comedian Eddie Izzard parodies.

For Republicans, it goes like this: Economy going down? "Cut Taxes". Economy going up? "Cut Taxes". It's illogical and misguided. Worse, it's unsustainable. Taxes in the US are now lower than they've been since the 1950's (USA Today, Tax bills in 2009 at lowest level since 1950). We simply can't cut taxes and operate our economy.

But wait, you've been told by prominent Republicans like current House Speaker John Boehner that "we don't have a revenue problem (taxes), we have a spending problem in the Federal government". Perhaps, but what would you cut and not imperil the critical buying power of the middle class?

The standard answer to that question for Republicans like you seems easy - or is it? GOP pundits and leaders say "cut social programs, that make up 2/3rds of our spending". Seems logical right? But which programs and how? When surveyed, even Tea Party Conservatives, the most virulent backers of decreased federal spending as the answer, don't want these social programs cut - and with good reason. They're all largely middle class, and if disaster strikes they are up the creek without a paddle and they know it.

According to the NY Times,

"despite their push for smaller government, [Tea Party backers] think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers". (NY Times, Tea Party Poll finds backers wealthier and more educated).

Still, we have to curtail the growth of these programs as the population ages and the workforce shrinks - which is occurring now as the baby boom generation retires. There are means to reduce growth rates without unnecessary risk to these safety nets. Let's take Social Security as an example. Social Security is solvent for about the next 30 years. However, it is growing fast and within 5-7 years or so, the output will surpass the income. That is more people will be collecting than paying into the program as the workforce shrinks and the retirement community grows. Simple changes, like increasing the retirement age when benefits could be gathered could be slowly increased over time, moving it from 65 years of age, to 67, and then some years later to 69. With our expanding lifespans this would not be terribly problematic for most workers, and for those where it is problematic, some exceptions could be made. For instance, for those in manual labor jobs. Additionally, a means test could be applied. People who pay into the program but earn more on average than $250,000/year in their last 10 years of employment are unlikely to need Social Security dollars in retirement. Do Bill Gates or Warren Buffet really need these dollars to remain active consumers in a healthy economy? No. These, and other practical adjustments to Social Security are being discussed and should be implemented to make this program sustainable for many more decades.

But what else could we cut. Military spending is at the top of my list. The US deploys thousands of soldiers around the world to protect our "interests", mostly petroleum, at great cost to the US, and no cost to the countries who benefit from our troop presence. Simply charging these countries for US troops is a good start. I'll speak more to other options in later chapters, but military spending cuts is a good place to start; the US can no longer afford to be the free policeman for the world and other emerging economies must step up. Of course the GOP opposes this idea. Surely you're not surprised.

Here's another example of government waste which should be harvested for maintaining our free markets. The richest industry in the history of the world is the oil business. GOP candidates have reaped millions in contributions from oil companies over the past decade. These oil companies have pushed these financed lawmakers for massive tax breaks and subsidies. Why would the US subsidize the richest industry in history? It makes no sense.

“We’re giving tax breaks to highly profitable companies to do what they would be doing anyway,” said Sima J. Gandhi, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization. “That’s not an incentive; that’s a giveaway.”

Many Republican lawmakers are so deeply in the pockets of the oil industry that their behavior is transparently submissive and lacking any true "common good" leadership. During the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, President Obama proposed to the BP CEO that a fund be established, financed by BP that would be set aside to make sure the company quickly and efficiently repaid the communities in the region for the clean-up and the financial harm caused by the companies' negligence. During a Senate hearing, Senator Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, actually apologized to the CEO of BP, claiming he was 'embarrassed', for the establishment of this fund - which the BP CEO had agreed to without resistance as the right thing to do to speed recovery post-spill. It's obscene.

According to the NY Times, there are nine categories of subsidies to this already wealthy industry, which has dozens of companies posting billion dollar profits every calendar quarter. These nine categories are: Intangible drilling costs, Deductions for tertiary injectants, Percentage depletion allowance, Passive investments, Domestic manufacturing tax deduction, Geological and geophysical expenditures, Foreign tax credit, Enhanced oil recovery credit, and Marginal well production. Doesn't that sound like we're padding the substantially profitable books of oil companies with taxpayer money? Right, it sounds like that because that is exactly what it is - a giveaway as thanks for political contributions. President Obama has proposed ending these subsidies. The total government savings from eliminating these subsidies is projected to be $45 billion over 10 years.

But adjustments in social programs, reduction in military spending to protect oil interests, and nonsense industry subsidies are not enough. Investment is also required. Just as the federal government created the Internet in the 1960's, which led to one of the largest expansions in GDP in our lifetimes as the consumer web grew from this government investment, other strategic investments must be made. One idea in this category has been proposed by NY Times Thomas Friedman in countless articles. His idea is US investment in a green economy. Friedman argues, correctly, that this would not only spur economic growth (perhaps even a boom), but would also end our dependence on foreign oil, minimize the power of what he calls "Petrocracies" (Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, etc) and all these US "interests" are no longer very interesting, and not worth the troop costs. More on that in upcoming chapters. (NY Times, As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Subsidies) (Center for American Progress, Eliminating Tax Subsidies for Oil Companies) (NY Times Friedman: The Energy Harvest) (NY Times Friedman: If Not Now, When?)

Clearly we have to reign in spending, decrease military expenditures we can no longer afford, stop subsidizing the most profitable industry of all time, the oil industry, a giant giveaway and a massive waste of precious tax revenue. And we must make reasonable adjustments to social programs to balance our budgets.

We must live within our means.

But, what are our means? Simple, tax revenues. Fairly taxing corporations and wealthy individuals. Does anyone really believe that GE should pay no taxes in 2009 during banner earnings, and indeed should get a $1.1B tax refund? Does anyone really believe that the wealthy would crumple under a "massive" 3 percent tax increase as proposed by President Obama - recession or not? Surely the wealthy would continue to be wealthy. Of course.

Seriously. A modest increase in taxes on the wealthy from 36% to 39% (as President Obama proposes) would not harm the wealthy, would not harm job creation (despite the factually unsupported arguments to the contrary by Conservative officials), and would increase our "means"; making it easier to balance budgets.

According to Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times again,

"[Under Obama's tax proposal], the richest 0.1 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut of $61,000 from President Obama. They would get $370,000 from Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. And that provides only a modest economic stimulus, because the rich are less likely to spend their tax savings. On tax breaks for the wealthy, who remember are already richer than ever, now owning 24% of our incomes, don't need tax breaks, rarely create new jobs, and will not be harmed by this increase. At a time of 9.6 percent unemployment, wouldn’t it make more sense to finance a jobs program? For example, the money could be used to avoid laying off teachers and undermining American schools".

Or, invest in R&D innovations to drive a green economy, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, reduce our military expenditures and country subsidies to maintain stability in oil rich dictatorships, and spur job growth. The benefits are endless.

Indeed. As an aside, it heartens me that reasonable, logical right-leaning commentators like Kristof still exist. They feel like a threatened species off in some corner awaiting extinction of late, as the increasingly conservative lunatic fringe of the GOP takes more and more control and targets moderate Republicans for upcoming elections. The far right calls these moderate GOP lawmakers "RINOs" an acronym for "Republicans In Name Only". It seems compromise and balance are not favored by our countrymen on the Right.

It is upon this shifting sand of fantasy economic ideology and draconian and misguided policy that conservative politicians now operate with increasing fervor. Allowing the GOP more power in our government, where they will lower taxes even more, allow corporations to continue pay no taxes, even get refunds, expand military spending, refuse to stop subsidizing already rich industries, deny investment in new growth sectors, and kill off important, reasonable social safety nets -  is a recipe for disaster. The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Do we really need another GOP majority to see that trickle down economics really is voodoo economics, as George H.W. Bush called it, and that the GOP is NOT the fiscally responsible party, but are slaves to their corporate interests?

In the next chapter, we will dive into the history and electoral math that have compelled, indeed required the GOP to manipulate Christian social issues in such a disingenuous manner.

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Other chapters in this book:

• The numbers game behind GOP strategies to manipulate voters
• The GOP: Hiding within Complexity
• The Tea Party phenomenon, a grassroots effort? Hardly
• The Christian Turing Test
• The GOP strategy of (Pseudo) Crisis Leverage
• How the GOP seeks power at the expense of US middle-
  class economic health
• The Conservative Psyche
• Conclusions

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